Monday, July 19, 2010

I am currently writing you from beautiful, verdant, and sunny (gasp!) England. I always feel inspired by this country--maybe it's because some of my favorite novelists (Jane Austen; Dickens; Henry James; Lewis Carroll; Phillip Pullman; J.K. Rowling) are English or at the very least have spent a huge portion of time here, but the landscape of England just seems saturated with literary magic.In fact, I was saying to my sister just today--as we were strolling through the charming, labyrinthine Oxford streets; and crossing over the Thames, which winds lazily through the city and is dotted with houseboats and punters; while students and scholars whizzed past us on bicycles--that it almost seems unfair. Pullman, Rowling--they had such magic material to work with in the first place! They came from a place steeped already with tradition and story and imagination--no wonder they were able to get the creative juices flowing!

So, my pets, my Monday Morning Challenge is this: today, I want you to write between 250-300 words of the first page of a children's book...set in Detroit. If you can find magic in that city, dear friends, you can find and evoke it anywhere! And no cheating. I want car dumps, and cracked sidewalks, and packs of roaming dogs, not the shiny bright glitter of the Detroit 1950s hay-day, or some bowdlerized version of the place now.

I love England. Wish I wasn't stuck all the way down here. If there is one place I could not set a novel in, it's here in NZ.

I have a friend/fellow blogger who lives in Detroit, so I'll mention this to her.

I'd give it a shot despite not having been there (because I rock at the desire to write about places I know next no nothing about) but I've banned myself from working on anything except my WIP, especially the potential start of a new project.

♥Ah, off to dream about English magic while writing a novel set in the US. Why does this always happen to me? XD